PG 1595 
.E9 P3 
Copy 2 



MOUNTAIN ROSES 



Selections from the poems of 
MITCHUN M. PAVITCHEVITCH 

(ONE OF THE FOREMOST SERBIAN POETS FROM MONTENEGRO) 




Mitchun M. Pavitchevitch 



MOUNTAIN ROSES 

Selections from the poems of 
MITCHUN M. PAVITCHEVITCH 

(ONE OF THE FOREMOST SERBIAN POETS FROM MONTENEGRO) 
RENDERED AND EDITED IN ENGLISH BY 

WOISLAV M. PETROVITCH 

Author of "HERO TALES AND LEGENDS OF THE SERBIANS", 
"SERBIA: HER PEOPLE HISTORY AND ASPIRATIONS", ETC. 



NEW YORK, N. Y. 
1918 



hf 






em 

MAY I 1918 



5 



at 



PUBLISHED BY 

Jos. A. Omero, Publisher 
4 Greenwich Street, New York, N. Y. 



COPYRIGHT 1918 BY 

. Jos. A. Omero 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Wilson's Song 13 

The Song of the Dusk 14 

Serbian's Lament 15-16-17-18 

From the Cicle of "Monteuegrine Types" 19 

Yole Piletich 20 

Stoyan Kovatchevitcl . 21 

Mournful Reminiscences 22-23 



Our Heroes 



Lazar Pecirep 24-25-26-27-28 

Petar Mrkonjic ; 29 



MITCHUN M. PAVITCHEVITCH 

A LYRICIST OF MONTENEGRO. 

Montenegrins are not only good warriors, as the world 
has finally acknowledged; they are natural, born poets. 
The entire Serbian race, of which the Montenegrins are 
the most florishing branch, is endowed with a powerful 
gift for epic poetry. There are several volumes of heroic 
national songs in which, like in the Iliad and Odyssey, 
the unknown Serbian bards, or minstrels, have glorified, 
from the earliest Middle Ages to this day, the deeds and 
feats of some favourite national hero or some important 
historic event. The whole nation participated in that 
enchanting occupation and we Serbians are as proud of 
our epopee as the Hellenes of their Iliad. In my opinion the 
zvord genius has been ridiculously abused by all nations, 
for the only possible genius is a people, not an individuum. 
And it is because the Serbian epopee has been composed by 
the Serbian people that it can justly be called ingenious. 
There is hardly any Serbian illiterate peasant to be found, 
in the remotest village of Serbia, Montenegro, Herzegovi- 
na, Bosnia and other Serbian-speaking countries, who 
could not tell the story of our favourite hero Kralevitch 
Marko or some other knight, and tell it in a beautiful de- 
casyllabic, blank verse. Hence it is small wonder to knozv 
that our present poet, Mitchun M. Pavitchevitch, can 
alsp sing in that pleasing and easy meter, for it is 
innate, inherent in every Serbian. Although self-taught, 



Pavitchevitch is not an illiterate bard, like most of his 
countrymen; on the contrary he is comparatively a very 
learned man. Therefore his epic style differs consider- 
ably from that of the average Serbo-Montenegrin mins- 
trel. Follozving the sublime example of one of the 
greatest poets of the Serbian race, Prince and Bishop 
Peter Petrovitch from the Niegosh, who has become 
immortal with his Gorski Viyenatz {Mountain Wreath), 
a drama in decasyllabic verse dealing with almost 
all principal problems in philosophy, our young poet 
Pavitchevitch has composed many a song in that very 
meter, not only because he thought it more appropriate 
'for his philosophic and didactic subject matter but also 
because his thought is less hampered by that meter than 
it would be by any other in which his lyric subjects are 
treated. In his song "Serbian's Lament" the poet pours 
cut his ire at the envious, malicious and despicable bureau- 
cracy of his country and Serbia. He is a true son of the 
Montenegrin soil-tiller and zvarrior and although himself 
a high governmental official and a national deputy, the 
artfulness, duplicity and dishonesty of the officials, whose 
minds hare been poisoned by vices and shining corruption 
of the European large cities, appear to his pure and simple 
heart uncommonly vile and he feels keenly a sort of "mal 
du monde" when he says: 

{< The world is but Hell of shameful battle 
"In which lawly hungers and screams sadly 
"In which vices triumph over virtue 
"In wHich heart to cold stone is converted, 
"In which life of highest knightly spirit 
"Putrifies through stings of flies the smallest. 

Like every true Serbian from Montenegro he awaits 



patiently and strives ardently for the "Great Aurora" that 
will down for all the Serbian-speaking lands, dreaming 
of the union of all the Serbians, Croatians and Slovenians 
into one independent state. In all his patriotic songs 
Pavitchevitch has shown but an average Serbian patriot 
with his innate love for liberty and there is hardly any- 
thing in those songs that is not common to all true lovers 
of the native soil. It is in his lyric songs that he shows all 
the might of his torrential verve which can hardly be 
excelled even by the greatest lyricist of the Western 
Europe. Though somewhat razv and unfinished in his 
manner of treatment he reveals art and conceals the artist. 
When Pavitchevitch is possessed by a true emotion he is 
inimitable, unattainable in beauty and subtleness of ex- 
pression and in originality of rhetoric figures. Neither 
the darling of roses, Saadi, nor the tremulously sensitive 
Shelly could favourably compete with our Mitchun in 
exhuberance and opulent delicacy of thought in verses like 
these {depicting the usual thing called "Sunset") : 

"When the Sun pours out the last jug 
Of blood and flame that give life . . . ." 

or (speaking of his lady love who is young) : 

" .... I shall plunder the jewels of thy youth". 

Ovid, himself, would grow yellow with jealousy if he 
read these poems and Sapho — had she been Mitchun' s con- 
temporary — would stab the poet and spit venom at him if 
she knew that some of his verses had not been addressed to 
her. In his "Song of the Dusk", zvhich I consider the 
finest he had ever sung, there is more of that quintessen- 
( tial requisite for any zvork of art — genuine emotion — than 
in the zvhole of "Boston and Giulistan". 



From the seventeen little volumes of Mitchuris poetrv 
several have been translated in French, English, Bohe- 
mian, Russian, Roumanian and other languages and it is 
to be hoped that some day my esteemed friend and Ame- 
rica's foremost poet, Under wood- Johns on, may trans- 
versify our real poet Mitchun as he has done, years ago, 
in co-operation of Mr. Tesla, with our skillfidl versificator 
Jovan Jovanovitch-Zmaj. My rough and verbatim trans- 
lations are really intended jnst to interest Mr. Johnson 
or some other gifted poet of this country to dip in the 
treasure of the Serbian poesy. 

W. M. Petrovitch. 

New York City, January, 191 8. 



10 



WILSON'S SONG. 

Boils, overpours the heart and blood rustles hot ! . . . 
And every atom of my being vibrates. . . . 
Why should my country with mournful brow 
Look on and linger, while her children in chains are 
dying ? 

I can hear the agon}' of dying millions 
Under the dull sword of the maddened beast 
And the heavy echo of the funeral bells 
Amidst the giggling and screeming of the hungered 
[Lucifer. 

While the Old World is perishing and sobbing 
Under the hoofs of reinless stallions, 
It seems that every cry of his heart 
Resounds along our manors. 

Enough of pain and offenses ! 
Enough of mean silence that destroys souls 
Wherefore should we endure the false idol 
And let him murder us secretly ? 

To the battlefield of honour, freedom and right ! 

For battle will resurrect our dead 

And bring a new epoch to the mankind ! . . . 

Our battle is the ire of the God-Man 

Against the Antichrist of the twentieth century 

And a cup of bitterness for the German Empire. 

II 



THE SONG OF THE DUSK 

When the Sun pours out the last jug 

Of blood and flame that give life 

And when stealthily the milde crepiscule canopies 

Our village in which passions sleep, 

I am waiting for thee, weary but awake 
In the dark room of the old cottage, 
Dreaming that, drunk and half-mad, 
I shall plunder the jewels of thy youth. 

And thou didst come, like the Goddess of Night 
With black ribbons down thy marble shoulders 
Like a lost ghost in the glooming solitude 
Frou-frou'd thy vestments of silk. 

While out of doors the dew was sighing 

Through bosoms and hearts overpoured boiling blood, 

The disordered hair was carressed and kissed 

And mightily beat two capricious hearts. 

And quiwered thy crimson lips 

Before the end of a tempestuous passion 

And like the wave that breaks against the rock 

So were scattered the dreams fall of delight. 



12 



SERBIAN'S LAMENT 

Woman never man has been, o, never 

(And Christ himself by men is condamned) 

Falcon never has been crow, o, never 

Nor coward knight fit for bloody duel. 

Let very pearl be trown in the dirt : 

For it's jewel in the empr'ror's crown. 

Men at Moon shoot with their accursed rifles 

And old witches hiss from ashes snake-like 

Satan himself is not what men make him 

Truth must vanquish lie, the cursed falsehood ! 

Most beautiful rose in bush is hidden 

From the spiteful hand of rascal children. 

When the mighty thunder sounds and lightnings, 

Fiever shaken are both pines and bushes. 

Rut true hero knows not for tears, weeping; 

Cowards crawl to feet of ugly murder'rs 

T have always scorned the spiteful anger 

For my bones are made of steel the hardest. 

Weak men alone condescend to begger 

But the strong one beareth Cross on shoulders. 

Fable tells us : "Man is sacred being" ; 

But from science: "He's but beast the wildest". 

I myself would rather trust to Darwin 

Than to Moses, darling son of Bible. 

Howe'r this be o, co-suf 'ring brother 

Know that glory grows but after burial. 

13 



Through snow-storms of tragedy and evil 
Have been rushing 'gainst my sweet ideals 
Thundrous storms have given all their buffets 
Have been falling from tops of rock cliffs. 
\ es, but never has my soul, the proud 
Knelt, o never, under painful burden 
Standing firm like tree of God's plantation. 
On the traces of my wretched ashes, 
Will shine justice of God the eternal 
But my spirit will fly high above them, 
There where never room for devil has been. 
All the blows of men and of Destiny 
Will be scatter'd 'gainst the Forum of Truth. 
Soul but whispers, pen but flies the slender 
Hour has struck now for Shame to be known. 
This world is but Hell of shameful battle 
In which lawly hungers and screams sadly, 
In which vices triumph ower virtue 
In which heart to cold stone is converted 
In which life of highest knightly spirit 
Putrifies through strings of flies the smallest, 
In which truth and equity of all men 
Slumbers under wounds and chains so heavy, 
In which Cross holds the blood-cover'd poniard 
And protects the crimes of crudest magnate. 
Cato himself, if he were arisen, 
Would fall in dust before mighty Caesar 
Would spit at his honest plea of sometime, 
From his Caesar would receive the medal. 
In this world of lies and cursed mishaps 
I know not who drinks nor who pays, brother, 
To whom to-day empr'or's scepter's given 



14 



Him to-morrow they send to the madhouse 

Those who to-day crowl in mud the dirt' est 

Are to-morrow glorified in marble. 

Demagogues cry with full voice their rages : 

"We are offsprings of scientific progress". 

Wild beast, slaughters his young in the cradle 

And swears he's not animal the fearsome. 

Wolf's neck they have with a bell distinguished 

To him mild sheep as gift have been given 

For their leader hare has been elected 

Fierce hyaena for their saint approved. 

Maybe will they for his deads so "humane" 

Build a chapel to that Caligula, 

And crucify Socrates the savant 

"'Cause he leadeth this word to the gallows !" 

Cicero they will call the greatest dullard 

And Nero will they call the greatest Roman. 

One day thou wilt see: the very donkey 

Wearing medals won in bloody battles, 

And the justest dying under burden 

While the villain burdens him and beats him. 

Diogenes all his life has, they say, 

With a candle searched far true man, alas ! 

Even to-day in twentieth cent'ry, 

Would he not find this man's very shadow ! 

my Serbian, my beloved brother, 

Thine own children in their chains are suff'ring 

1 can hear them groan and cry so sadly 
Under numb'rless sufferings and shaking. 

The whip from Hell strikes thine chest so fragil. 

Men have burried thine liberty cherish'd 

All are strangers, those who thy hearth ravage 

15 



And thy sacred rights are torn and trodden. 

Thine lov'd daughter wears sad veil the blackest 

With thine sceptre others are now swaggering. 

Suffer, carry, all these pains and troubles ! 

Destiny's whip ruins all and scatters. 

Hark at Ocean ! Is he not then murmur'ng ? 

But Time dries him. Who, can do like Time does? 



16 



FROM THE CICLE OF "MONTENEGRINE TYPES" 

Drago Obrenov. 

O carven, my home, my hearth ! 

'Tis in thee that I await the purple of the Great Aurora 
And hope for the hour of near Resurrection 
Which is to come to my forests, 

Which are overflowing with despair and darkness. 

Endure, o brothers, my fellow rebels ! 

In our sky that's full with icy rays 

Will flutter the Eagle of Cross and Freedom. 

And our land '11 once again be our parent ; 
All the Judas shall we inter for ever 
And our own graves shall be incensed 

By the sons that are born and coming like a tempest; 
Over the ashes of our skeletons 
Their brows shall be kissed by. Victory. 



17 



YOLE PILETICH 

my cherished hills of eternal rocks, 
On whose breast darkest thistles grow, 
(Never in ye white herds had grazed) 

1 know your wishes, your stories ! 

From my very cradle am I bound to ye, 

Every foot of ye do I cherish mightily 

For, 'tis within ye that my enchained forefathers 

Died silently on rigid ropes. 

O, my beloved mountains, ye monuments of terror, 
'Tis on your hoar heads that I have elevated 
Baricade which is stronger than the very sky. 

Let no winter freeze your bosom again, 

Ye shall never again be stricken by vermilion showers ; 

My people must have its own crust of bread. 



18 



STOYAN KOVATCHEVITCH 

When the silent crepiscule falls 
Upon the mountains and rocky summits 
And the most belated bird from the bush 
Flies to its warm nest : 

I, overloaded with burden of years, 
Bent in twain under my black straka* 
Stricken by the thought about my son, 
Am shedding worm tears on the naked rock. 

In my broken breast and heart 
I feel the pain and sorrow 
And the dark thought wakens in me : 
That I shall perish shamefully — 

If Death should knock of sudden 
Now when on all sides 
Battles are raging, guns aroaring, 
Should I be burried by women ? ! 

And the old warrior's shaken by sobs 
Alone, in the densest darkness. 

Tis morn The grave-diggers 

Have dug the sire's eternal dwelling ! 



*A kind of narrow and long shawl worn by men over shoulder as an ornament. 

19 



MOURNFUL REMINISCENCES.* 

The day was heavy, livid and gloomy. The sun was 
dead and the sky burst in tears before the dark fate of my 
people. . . . 

But the stone-like hearts of the murderers would not 
hear nor feel this 

Lead-like and eternal night was falling. The sea 
blew a mighty and mad sigh like a gravely wounded 
warrior ; its tempestous waves mourned with their furious 
uproar, the infernal destiny of my people. 

Yet, the stone-like hearts of the killers of body would 
not hear nor feel 

The lightnings shone, the thunders burst asunder 
over our frost-clad forests. Centuries-stricken firs and 
mapple trees bent their heads down to the blood-stained 
ground and sobbed with the pain of an arrowed falcon. 

And the stone-like hearts of the murderers would 
not hear nor feel. 

Lovcen has been turned into a half-dead aligator 
from whose jaws a volcano of ire and vangence errupted 
against the underground cells of the merchants of Venice 
and debauched aristocracy. The soul of a deeply offended 
people wept. 

But the stone-like hearts of the murderers would not 
hear nor feel. 

A long flock of ravens — nuncioes of evil omen and 
death — fluttered about the gigantic monuments of our 



♦ This song in prose is considered by the Serbians en masse as the author's 
finest production. It is really his farewel poem when he left Montenegro for 
America, and reminds somewhat the elegies which Ovid, Dante or Hugo wrote 
in exile. 

21 



glory and our legendary past, and, with their despair- 
stricking crowing warned the evil masters against demol- 
ishing of national shrines. 

But the stone-like hearts of the murderers would not 
hear nor feel. 

Thousands of ghosts of our great heroes wandered 
through the misty air and, through the mouth of the 
greatest of the great, sang: "Do not sacrilege the hills of 
our ashes !" 

* But the stone-like hearts of the murderers would 
not hear nor feel. 

Below the Serbian Olympus was uttered the horrible 
cry of the Mother whose bosom has been rent asunder by 
her own child. From the Eagle Rock, with clipped wings 
and disordered hair, fled the shrieking oreads to lands 
foreign and unknown. 

But the stone-like hearts of the murderers would not 
hear nor feel. 

In the old hut the demented mother, uttering hellish 
shriekes, smothered her own babe that he may not become 
a slave. 

But the stone-like hearts of the murderers would not 
hear nor feel. 

Every atom of my being moved with horror. ... I 
shed tears of a man who has for the first time felt the 
weight of human evil .... With clutched fists I rushed 
out from the darkness in search of daylight, that I mav 
no longer hear the mournful song of my rocky mountains 
and enslaved forests. But, alas ! I still discern the faint 
accords of the despairing tune of my crucified country, 
I hear the grinding of teeth, the heavy agony, the curse 
and anathema of my people who is buried in one grave. 



22 



OUR HEROES. 

Lazar Pecirep 

I. 

In the distant hut the fire is dying, 
Lazar slumbers on a rock covered by his struka 
Under his head lay his yatagan and his clear-voiced gun 
And in his sack by his side a gruesome relic : a Turk's head. 

From the summits of the snow-covered Kopitnik 
In flocks were falling snow-flakes 
And through the dark Velestovo a wild screaming : 
Tis hungry birds that flutter and mourn. 

Around the sheep-fold wanders the spaniel, 
Guarding the herd from Turks and wild beasts, 
And, spying silently, keeps his master Pecirep 
And the mare, till the Aurora. 

And while the branches crack under the ice 
And the melted snow is falling from roofs 
Down to the depth maybe of the destroyed soul 
Like gains of burning pains and sorrow. 

Haiduk* Lazar from his hard bed is rising 

Through the night sparkles the flint 

And to! the flame licks already the sooth-covered chains 

And on the hearth dry branches crack. 



* Free-lancer, or guerilla worrior. During the Ottoman misrule in the Balkans 
the Haiduks were the only control orer the atrocities of the Turks. 

23 



II. 



'Tis morn. . . . The sun in the net of darkness 

With shamefacedness like an orange in the branches, 

Has hidden his visage in the morning mist 

Only now and then throwing a ray upon the soil. 

Velestovo is sinking amidst the mountain gorges 
Amidst the rocks white homes are peeking 
And from the precipices circles of smoke drive on 
'Tis the shepherds who are making the fires of the 



The bony old men wrapped in their strukas 
Tell the story of the battles and campaigns 
Burying their thoughts in the glorious past 
They still dream of fresh insurrections. 

Lazar leads his herd in the mountain slope, 
While a lost bird sings somwhere her song 
To the mountain summit, forests and liberty 
While in Lazar s head thoughts are swarming: 

"'Tis upon the stone that my mother bore me 

'Tis upon the stone that 1 live for ever 

'Tis stone that gave me the name of 'King of the Rock' 

'Tis from the stone that I drink the remedy-carrying wate 

"This stone is bathed in an oceaen of blood . 
It is the monument of my forefathers and the Holy Cross 
So ! the ancient blood is still running from his stone. 
This stone has been defended and kept by the point of 
sword. 

24 



Thus the haiduk in a trance thinks and dreams 
And moved from his stony arm-chair, 
But in the mountains, over the rocks and branches 
One armed Turk after another is leaping forward. 

To their encounter goes Lazar alone, without a simple 

comrad 
Behind a rock he crouched, hid his sun-burnt face 
Spying the band, dispising and scorning death. 
But behold ! The evil-doers Turks emerged. 

Cocked his flint-lock on his opanak's tops * 
Upon his yatagan his right hand fell 
And with the left he fired his thin musket 
And he shot the leader Tale of Onogosht. 

While charging his musket he fired his two pistols 

In the midst of the haughty usurpers 

And lo ! two more chif tains fell 

And the forest re-echoed with cries of agony. 

Over tree-trunks and rocks the Turks are fleing 
Half -dead with terror as if thunder-stricken, 
While the haiduk peacefully cuts off the heads of the three 
And driving his flock, sombre and bloody he steps 
homeward. 

Above the blood-stained Velestovo the san is sinking 
And rotting in the abys are the three Turkish corpses 
While at Nikshitch three Turkish spouses shed tears 
Cursing bitterly Pecirep, the fierce haiduk. 



*Opanak is a sort of home-made foot-ware in Serbia and Montenegro with 
a pointed top. Lazar, having lost in a duel his right arm, had the top of his 
left opanak split in two in the shape of a fork to support his flint which he fired 
with left hand and kept up his fight against the Turks. 

25 



III. 



On the mountaint summit juicy trees are budding 
And through their trunks new life beams 
Through the gorges and neck-breaking holes 
The shepherd's song issues from his two-tubed flute. 

Lazar gathers a band of thirty forest giants. 
Who are eager for battle, blood and vengence 
Through the hills, mountains and forests 
Thirty comrads boldly fly like hurricane. 

The first crepiscule descended from the Krnovo mountain 
And in the manor of Pelevic the early fires burn 
While triumph the rows of pines the company faced ; 
And Lazar's soul was tormented by thirst for vegance. 

And like an angry tiger he rushed in the manor 
Two bulas* were saved by the thick darkness 
Shouts and cries broke the air, the bloody drama started 
And a stained yatagan embraced Beca's two sons. 

Through Velestovo at the break of the Dawn 
Thunder-like muskets roar, the song re-echoes 
Lazar avenges his brothers : Rado and Bogdan 
While Beca Pelevic at Niksic sighs. 



♦ Turkish women. 

26 



IV. 



Over the range of Kopitnik, the forest dwelling 
Where spectres with fairies dance in a ring 
Lazar was lain one day 
Eager for breath and freedom. 

And while the snn is dying behind the rocks 

And the forest grass spreads luxuriously its perfumes 

Lazar, covered with his black struka 

On a stone, under arms was resting. 

Beneath his feet one stone rolled after another 
The point of haiduk's sword pricks his back 
From Velestovo the Turks drove his herd 
And Lazar bound is conducted to Gacko. 

Over Lipnik ravens are fluttering 
Over Gacko rin^s of smoke are rising 
Lazar's face dark as midnight 
Is liked by the flames of Janissaries' fires. 

From the wrecks and ashes grass has grown 

Thither oreads come every night 

To visit the haiduk's grave 

While Gacko still slumbers under the foreign yoke. 



27 



PETAR MRKONJIC* 

Thou art come like a hurricane, with the face of a saint 

Under the load of pains that agonize the soul 

And like a marevelous, gigantic image 

Fluttered over the battlefield with thy big heart. 

That was the moment of a swallen tide 

Of dolors and doubts, when souls freeze 

A day of summer sun, storm and winter 

When we rushed through death : to the grave or victory. 

The bones of thousands giants were cracking 
And the hurricane of infernal fire was boiling 
Over Serbia : mother of silent heroes. 

While thy word, from the sombre rock 
"Forward, heroes ! . . . like a midnight storm — 

Thundered and was the triumph of the terrible 

struggle 



*This is the name of King Peter Karageorgevitih under which he led the 
insurrection in Herzegovina. 

28 



MITCHUN M. PAVITCHEVITCH 
404 West 23rd Street, New York, N. Y. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



002 630 669 3 * 



